We get high on the Holy Spirit

Each summer, thousands of teenagers dance, flirt and get out of their minds in muddy fields. But this is no Glastonbury hedonism - it's religious ecstasy at Christian festivals. Josh Stupple testifies to parties and prayer in his winning entry for this year's GQ Norman Mailer Student Writing Award

There were 23,000 people around me, the believers, the same people who came every year. We were at Soul Survivor, a Christian festival in Bath, and most of them were teenagers whose ecstatic, delirious form of belief I witnessed for three years running. Where other kids their age might spend their summers learning to drink or having sex, the young people I met practised a different kind of transcendence.

The boy next to me was sweating, his eyelids closed. This is how people look when they believe they see God. He held out his hands, receiving an invisible gift. "Thank you, Jesus, thank you," he whispered. The man next to him held a hand to his heart, staring at the ground. His laugh was frenzied. A 14-year-old girl rocked silently on her knees, her hands outstretched towards the stage, where a man in grey blessed and conducted his audience. Beside me, another teenager lay on the floor, and a crowd gathered. A large, toothy grin consumed his face, and noises began to rise out of him.

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The crowd listened to the strange babbling, as if wisdom, and truth, and revelation, were somehow hidden in his incoherence.

Let me take you back. It wouldn't be enough to say I came from a religious family. Religion was our defining feature. It was hard to pin down exactly what brand of Christianity my parents ascribed to; we changed church often and with much ceremony. My father was a firm believer in the tradition of the Church of England but he also had, and continues to have, a profound admiration for the teachings of the Charismatics. When I was ten years old, my father called me into his office. It was a small, tidy room at the back of the house, with a desk, a computer and a bookcase full of unread theological texts. He asked me whether I believed in God. I told him I did. He nodded. Then he asked me if I had experienced God, seen him, heard him, sensed his presence in my life. I said I hadn't. He nodded again, and said, "If you truly believe in Him, then one day, you will."

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The Charismatic Church is most commonly a form of Protestantism that emphasises personal interaction with God, visions, tongues and healings. It is reliant on the manifestation of supernatural experiences. In more mainstream Christian circles, the Charismatics are often dubbed "the crazy Christians". It is a movement more popular in the US than anywhere else, of course. These are not the Christians that you will find singing hymns on Easter Sunday in a parochial church; rather, you will find them at festivals, talking in tongues with hands raised to the sky. Soul Survivor is one such festival, and it is known for its specific focus on young teenagers.

As with any other festival, there is camping. There is mud and music; there is dancing and excited contact with friends and strangers. No alcohol. Some of the kids wear hoodies with "JOHN 3:16" written in bold letters on the front and back. One year at the festival, a popular T-shirt carried the AC/DC band logo altered to JC/DC, with an explanatory "Jesus Christ/Demon Crusher" placed underneath. The teenagers who wear their faith on their clothes are in the minority, however. Most of them look like average, boring youngsters; they wear modest blues, pallid greens. The girls wear skinny jeans and checked blouses; none of their skirts go above the knees. They dress as parents might prefer.

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There is a bit of light theological teaching and easy-going rural shenanigans in the day, but then, at night, the believers gather in order to fortify their belief. Every night during the five days of a Soul Survivor festival, thousands gather under the cover of the Big Top. From far away it looks like a circus tent.

Once you get close, you realise it is gutted of any seating.

Instead, there are matted floors where the crowds sit to listen and stand to sing. The tent is circular and the stage is placed in the centre, allowing the crowd to form a wheel around it. I can still smell the sweat of the crowd as it gathers and tightens around the stage. Youth leaders from various churches around the country would have herded the teenagers to the festival in minivans and borrowed school buses, so the huge tent is packed by the time the service begins. All age groups are accounted for, though, as I remember it, the crowd is mainly made up of 12- to 17-year-olds.

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At my first festival, the teenagers chat among themselves.

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A group of girls gather in a circle beside me, sharing secrets. I talk to my friends from church, about television, about video games, football, girls. We are waiting to be told to focus on holy things, feeling a tinge of excited guilt when we use words like "shit" and "f***" within earshot of our youth leader. We always feel slightly watched, yet there is an overall feeling of freedom at the festival. We are away from our parents - allowed to stay up late, play pranks. As with most festivals, there is an exciting suggestion of sexuality, but it is mostly innocuous.

The first small relationships of early adolescence are often formed at these camps, those that begin with a touch of the hand and a first, quick kiss. For many young, shy Christian people this is a place of safe romantic experimentation, a place of intimacy with which their overbearing parents will be comfortable. This feeling of freedom comes at a cost. It is earned every night under the cover of the Big Top.

Each night is structured similarly. The main speaker arrives on stage; he gives a warm welcome and introduces the band for the first session of music and worship. "Let us stand and give thanks to the Lord."

The crowd rises together in one movement. The same songs are played every night, the lyrics projected on overhead screens. By the middle of the week, everyone knows all the words by heart. They are love songs, of a sort. "Water you turned into wine/

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Out of the ashes you climbed/

There's no one like you/

None like you."

The Christian God we sing about on these nights is all-powerful and all-loving. He is the answer to all the ills of the world. He is even beautiful. He is responsible for everything that is good. "You're the air that I breathe/

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You are everything I need/

Jesus, you are all that I need."

The music itself is always guitar-led. The lyrics are simple and they punctuate everything. Almost all the songs are sung from a personal perspective. God is your saviour. He is your king. "What can wash away my sin?/

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Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

The God of this kind of worship song is not just the answer to your problems; he is the only answer to every problem.

When the music ends, the focus returns to the preacher. He - and it is usually he - will be dressed informally, sometimes in shorts and sandals. He holds a Bible in one hand, a microphone in the other. The Bible is rarely opened, used more as a prop than as a religious text. The language is a perfect mix of the colloquial and the ecclesiastical. He starts with a story, a parable from his own life. The advertised themes of the talks are simple. They can almost always be condensed to a one-word summary: healing, sin, gospel, faith, love. "God loves you so much."

Repetition is key to the operation. Every talk is punctuated by a catchphrase that keeps recurring. "He wants to embrace you, take care of you. God loves you so much. Here's a big line that I want you to remember - I believe with my whole heart that Jesus came not to show us what he could do, but Jesus came to show us what we could do. God loves you so much."

The theme of these talks is personal empowerment, attained through a belief in God. They are designed not to challenge or provoke, but to comfort. The preachers speak at a hypnotic pace.

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They linger on powerful words. They are there to reassure those who, despite having grown up with Christianity, have become doubtful. They provide a strong, authoritative voice against the influence of secular culture. "There were places where Jesus went where he couldn't perform miracles, because the people didn't believe. There are times where you are going to run into opposition, and you can't get frustrated by that."

Mike Pilavachi is the co-founder and the main ecclesiastic presence at Soul Survivor. He is a large man in his mid-forties; his hair is made up of dark ringlets and he has a strong but kind voice. He is a captivating and self-effacing figure. He often makes reference to his own virginity when his sermons find their way to the topic of sex and relationships. "I'm in my forties and I haven't slept with anyone, animal, vegetable or mineral, and I'm OK."

It is this kind of humble honesty that endears Pilavachi to his followers. "Embrace the gift of celibacy until the gift of marriage," he advises. At Soul Survivor he speaks in no uncertain terms; everything is a gift or a curse, a blessing or a sin. Herein lies the power of the charismatic Christian speaker: he offers a vision of the world where everything is condensed into easily digestible dichotomies. The battle between good and evil is really quite an appealing idea to a teenager; it simplifies the moral complexities of the world just as we begin our struggle with them.

The speaker then announces the next, most pivotal, phase of the evening. "We are going to invite the Holy Spirit here now. We are going to ask him to do his work here tonight."

It isn't about the music now; the playing is a background to the real cacophony, the sound of the shouters and the screamers in the crowd. They scream his name. "Jesus!"

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They make a babbling sound that some call tongues and others call hysteria. From every corner of the tent come sounds the likes of which I've never heard. The first time, a chill runs through me, but I am reassured by the reaction of the crowd. Smiles creep onto the faces of the people around me. They have heard this before. God is here.

Not everyone, and not immediately, but the stricken eventually begin to rock and babble as if they are in a fever-induced delirium. If there appears to be a lull of any kind, the speaker addresses God directly, "More of you, Lord. Please fill them with your spirit, Jesus."

The most bombastic and theatrical symptom of being overcome by the Holy Spirit is the act of falling down. It begins with a wobbling of the legs that eventually builds to a rapid shaking of the entire body. The arms usually remain static, held outwards, with the palms facing the sky. The signs are obvious: it is not long before one or two of the person's friends, or fluorescent-jacketed festival volunteers, will gather around the individual, preparing for the endgame. Eventually, the legs will give out. He or she falls backwards into the waiting arms of those who have flocked around them. Gently, they are lowered to the ground, their eyes closed, their lips whispering the name of God.

It is surrender.

I had been told about people who would speak in tongues, and I had heard tales of modern-day miracles, visions and dialogues with God. So to see and be part of what seemed like divine intervention was a familiar shock. I never had a lasting moment of fear, because those on stage so carefully crafted an environment of ease. Close to me in the crowd, I watched a man in his twenties being lowered to the floor. He was tall, muscular even. To a young boy, it was like seeing a great tree being felled.

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But the look on his face could only be described as one of rapture.

This was the proof of God that I had been promised throughout my childhood. I wanted to feel what it was like to be overcome, to fall. This was the pinnacle of the Christian experience: genuine, unequivocal interaction with God...

During my final journey to Soul Survivor, it was my greatest unspoken desire to feel what the other fallers had felt. On the penultimate night of worship, I was ready with my hands raised.

Mike Pilavachi addressed the crowd, asking for anyone who wanted to be prayed for to stand up. I did as he asked. People flocked to me to lay their hands on my shoulders and back. This "laying on of hands", as it is known in the Charismatic movement, is a major part of the performance. I closed my eyes tightly. I wanted to block out the real world, the distant, irrelevant, distracting world. I searched for colours and pictures in the darkness of my closed eyes.

I stood and rocked forwards and backwards, repeating His name and singing the songs that we had been taught throughout the week.

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I had reached out to God in the way that I had been told to; I had submitted myself, asking for prayer. Yet I was numb. Not completely numb; I felt the light, warm touch of those who rested their hands on me, and certainly I felt close to a spiritual presence, or something that presented itself that way. It was impossible not to believe, in an environment so geared towards the confirmation of God's reality. But I was numb to any truly ecstatic feeling; my rocking was the result of mimicking those around me. My tongues were nothing but incommunicable murmurs to others and myself.

I wanted to fall. I wanted to know what it was like. I willed myself to go backwards. Swaying on the balls of my feet, waiting for some kind of push, a supernatural wind to hit me. Eventually I did fall, but only through a frustrated spasm of repeated movement.

I fell with my eyes closed, frantically searching for something more. There was nothing behind my eyes but pools of total darkness.

The people who believed more than I did lowered me to the ground and continued to hover their hands over me and pray. I could not tell them I had fallen on my own. How could I break a moment of spiritual intensity that they had all invested in?

I lay still and prayed that God would reach down and touch me in some tangible and unforgettable way. I fluttered my eyes, opening them to see the world I was trying to transcend. There was the light from the stage, intense and strange. I saw the people over my body, as if I had woken up during surgery. And, for a moment, among the mutterings of the elated crowd, I saw behind the curtain. I laughed and snorted, briefly recognising the absurdity of the event. My fall had woken me up.

My disenchantment was comforting at first - my failure to connect with heaven was not my own failure, but that of those who had promised me it was possible. It was not long before it became depressing, before I sensed an ending. This was where a belief system that I had held all my life began to fall apart.

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I lay on the ground, hoping that I could fall back into that familiar trance. I prayed and whispered God's name. I imagined a world where good and evil are easily defined, and where a deity breathes ecstasy into your lungs if you believe in Him enough. When I chose to rise, a stranger asked me if I was OK, and did I want to talk about anything I had felt or seen? I said I was fine and eventually he left. I sat for a while, lucid and alive. At that moment, I believed that I had felt something, even if it did not reach the fanatical heights I had prayed for. A friend from church smiled at me. Some of our youth group were still in the throes of spiritual excess, laying on hands and singing songs triumphantly to each other, as well as to God. One girl sat on her own; her make-up had run down her cheeks and dried. She smiled at me when she saw me looking.

I walked out of the tent, into the throng of excited teenagers.

I was silent. I tried to cultivate an image of someone deep in thought, still reeling from what he had felt. I watched my feet, dodging the mud and puddles that had formed outside the safety of the tent's matted floors. I looked up to the sky, seeing in it the same darkness I had seen behind my eyes, but with a small light there, the light beyond belief.